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Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Dublin day 2

This morning started pretty early for me with a 3am wake up, not for necessity, just my body clock not quite adjusted as yet. Just outside our front door, literally directly across the road is the famous Temple bar, to my surprise when I got up there was still a lot of partying happening, and the bar was still open.

I waited until the sun rose a bit before I wandered down to get some photo's whilst the street was deserted. It s a lovely looking pub, but we haven't ventured in as yet.

So we started off with an early morning stroll, to the Guinness storehouse tour, we were the first group to go in . . . Anyone who knows Mr Googy knows he likes to be organised and arrive early.

The tour was self directed and was over five floors, detailing the process of how the beer is made and how different advertising ideas were invented. There was a tasting room ( I didn't partake....) where they explained the different tastes and how to drink the beer properly. And finally as you reached the top there is a bar with a 360 degree view over Dublin. It was a really interesting tour and only one mouthful of Guinness passed my lips.

After leaving the Guinness factory we headed to Christchurch Cathedral. Here we payed for the tour of the church, which I have to say was a really smart move. The tour was fabulous, the tour guide was so funny and so knowledgeable. He explained the various aspects of the church and how one of the walls is leaning 18inches . . . but it's been like that for a long time so we weren't to concerned

We were taken up to the bell tower, where they let us ring one of the many bells . . . and we could see these fabulous views across Dublin and to the hills.

The tour guide was telling us that the choirs of both the Christchurch cathedral and St Patrick's were the first to perform Handels Messiah back in 1742.

Whilst showing us the two organs that belonged to the cathedral, the tour guide explained that, a quiet a while back the they had had trouble tuning the oldest organ, eventually it was decided to pull it apart to discover the issue. The above mummified cat and rat were found firmly wedged in one of the pipes. The cat and "mouse" are referred to in James Joyce's "Finnegans wake".

After leaving the church we wandered to another part of town to meet up with the infamous Molly Malone. Molly is actually a fictional character however is so well know for her cockleshell sales by day and her alternative employment by night that she has been immortalised for all time in brass. After this we headed of to a yarn shop "this is knit", that I have followed for months on instagram, unfortunately I was totally out of luck, the shop was closed for Bank holiday, and when I return next weekend it will be closed again.

So after after all this walking and to drown my sorrows we headed to the oldest pub in Ireland " the Brazens head" Mr Googy had his Guinness and I had a cider and we enjoyed the history surrounding us on every wall of the pub. Later that night we enjoyed a few other bars and pubs, in clouding the O'neills pub which has little rooms going off everywhere and I had my first bowl of Irish stew.

It was a little great day and we both managed to stay awake u til 9pm . . . .

Thank you for sharing this journey with me

Ciao

Googy girl

Please don't feel offended if I do not reply to messages, we will be on the move a lot through out this trip and I have limited internet access